When the dark ones come hard days autumn, the rain annoyingly knocks on the windows, I usually read Bunin.
So yesterday I accidentally opened an unfamiliar folder on the desktop of my computer, and in it was Bunin's Diary for 1939-1945. According to his notes, you can trace all the key moments of the Second World War, find out how hard it was for him in those years. But something else surprises me, how much he wrote in that difficult time of hunger, already middle-aged, sick
. All the brightest stories were written at that time and they made up his most famous and beloved by readers collection "Dark Alleys".
And the name for the collection and, perhaps, the very idea of \u200b\u200bwriting such a collection was suggested to Ivan Alekseevich by Ogaryov's poem:
ORDINARY STORY
It's been a wonderful spring!
They were sitting on the beach
The river was quiet, clear
The sun was rising, the birds were singing;
Stretched for the river dol,
Quietly, luxuriantly green;
Near the wild rose scarlet blossomed,
There was an alley of dark lindens.
It's been a wonderful spring!
They were sitting on the beach
She was in her prime,
His mustache was barely black.
Oh, if anyone could see them
Then, at their morning meeting,
And I would look out for their faces
Or eavesdrop on their speeches -
How sweet his tongue would be,
The original love language!
He would surely b himself, at this moment,
Blossomed at the bottom of a sad soul! ..
I met them in the light later:
She was the wife of another
He was married, and about the past
There was not a word in sight;
There was peace on their faces.
Their life flowed lightly and evenly,
They meet each other
Could laugh in cold blood...
And there, along the river,
Where the scarlet rose hips then bloomed,
Some simple fishermen
Went to the dilapidated boat
And they sang songs - and it's dark
The rest is closed to people
What was said there
And how much has been forgotten.
At the end short story"Dark Alleys", which gave the name to the entire collection, Bunin cites two lines from this poem:
“The low sun shone yellow on the empty fields, the horses evenly spanked through the puddles. He looked at the flashing horseshoes, knitting his black eyebrows, and thought:
“Yes, blame yourself. Yes, of course, the best moments. And not the best, but truly magical! “All around the scarlet rose hips bloomed, there were alleys of dark lindens ...” But, my God, what would happen next? What if I hadn't left her? What nonsense! This same Nadezhda is not the keeper of the inn, but my wife, the mistress of my St. Petersburg house, the mother of my children? And closing his eyes, he shook his head.
October 20, 1938
Tsvetaeva dreamed of having a garden in her declining days, she wrote:
For this hell
For this nonsense
send me a garden
For old age."
But Bunin had it. . .
From his diaries:
6.9.1940
I write and look into the sunny "lantern" of my room, at its five windows, behind which there is a light fog of everything that lies around us with such beauty and spaciousness, and a huge whitish-sunny sky. And in the midst of all this is my lonely, eternally sad self.
(They brought a newspaper. [...] Churchill's speech devant la chambre des communes. In the last 2 months, England lost 558 aircraft. In August, 1,075 people died among the civilian population, 800 houses were destroyed. The German attacks in September will intensify [. ..])
21.4.1940
2 1/2 hours Walked in the garden - the second platform (from the lower road) was already overgrown with tall grass. Still blooming pale pink, light, delicate, v. femininity. flowers of some special kind of cherry, 2 clumsy apple trees bloom with white (also pinkish in buds) flowers. Irises are blooming, I found a rosehip branch blooming (light scarlet color with yellow pollen in the middle), some flowers, like poppies - the lightest, but bright orange color... I sat on a wicker, collapsing chair, looked at the mountains beyond Nice, light and vague as smoke ... Paradise! And for how many years I have seen him, I feel him!
Lonely, uncomfortable, but to move near Paris ... the insignificance of nature, the vile climate!
As always, almost exactly the same in the whole house. [...]
A bright day, a holiday, the sea seems to be emptyer - and they call, they call in the city ... I don’t know how to express what is behind all this.
A lot of moths curl around the color of lilac - white with a greenish tint, transparent. And again, bees, bumblebees, flies are born ...
23.5.42
Again I thought today: there is nothing more beautiful than flowers and birds in the world. More butterflies.
30.4.40
Night, a dark strip of forest in the distance and above it a star - humble, charming. It was somewhere, once upon a time, that struck me as a child for the rest of my life... My God, my God! I once had a childhood, the first days of my life on earth! I just can't believe it! Now just the thought that they were. And here come the last ones. [...]
7.5.40
Somehow, to me - as happens most often for no reason at all, it seemed to me: the evening after a thunderstorm and a downpour on the road to st. Babrykina. And heaven and earth - everything is already darkening gloomily. In the distance, above the dark strip of the forest, it still flares up. Someone is standing on the porch of an inn near the highway, cleaning the mud off their tops with a whip. There is a dog near him... From here "Styopa" came out.
30.7.40
Suddenly I remembered: Moscow, the Maly Theatre, stairs - and sometimes very warm, sometimes icy drafts.
20.IX. 40.
Started Rus. 22.IX. 40. Wrote "Mother's Chest" and "Along Pavement Street". 27.IX. 40. Finished "Rus". 29.IX. 40. Sketched "Wolves". 2. X. 40. Wrote "Antigone". Z.X.40. Wrote "Pasha" and "Smaragd". 5.X.40. Yesterday and today I wrote Business Cards". 7.X.40. Rewrote and corrected "Wolves". 10, 11, 12, 13. X. 40. Wrote and finished (at 3 hours 15 m.) "Zoyka and Valery". 14, 17, 18 , 20, 21, 22 October 40. Wrote and finished (at 5 o'clock) "Tanya" 25 and 26 October 40. Wrote "In Paris" (first pages - 24 October 40) 27 and 28 X. 40. Wrote "Galya Ganskaya" (finished at 4 hours 40 minutes. Day 28.10.
7.5.40
"A man and his body are two... When the body desires something, think about whether You really desire it. For You are God... Penetrate yourself to find God in yourself... Do not take your body for yourself ... Do not succumb to the incessant anxiety about trifles in which many spend most of his time. . ."
"One of those who have no rest.
From the thirst for happiness ... "
Seems like me, for my whole life (even to this day).
30.7.40
“I read about the experience that two Viennese students made a few years ago: they decided to hang themselves so that they could be taken out of the loop a moment before death and they could tell what they experienced. It turned out that they experienced a blinding light and a roar of thunder.
16. VI. 41. Monday, evening.
The contempt of the first Christians for life, their disgust from it, from its rigidity, rudeness, bestiality. Then the barbarians. And going into caves, into crypts, foundation of monasteries... Will it be the same in the 20th, in the 21st century?
28. VII. Sunday.
I am reading Krasnov's novel "God is with us". I did not expect that he was so capable, knew so much and was so busy. [...]
2 hours. Yes, I live in paradise. I still can’t get used to such days, to such a view. Today is a particularly great day. He looked through the windows of his lantern. All the valleys and mountains around in a sunny blue haze. To the side of Nice over the mountains wonderful thunderclouds. To the right, in pine forest above them, the beauty of heat, dryness, through the tops of the sky. On the right, along our stone stairs, small pink flowers two oleanders with their small sharp leaves. And loneliness, loneliness, as always! And the agonizing expectation of resolving the fate of England. I'm afraid to open the newspaper in the morning.
Since ancient times, it has been prescribed for Jews: always (and especially in happy Days) to think about death.
Belligerants. It can be translated by an old Russian word: opponents.
Lighthouses were lit. Seen from here for the first time (with "Jeannette")
22.6.41
WITH new page I am writing the continuation of this day - a great event Germany this morning declared war on Russia - and the Finns and Romanians have already "invaded" its "limits".
After breakfast (naked soup of mashed peas and salad) I lay down to continue reading Flaubert's letters (letter from Rome to his mother dated April 8, 1851), when suddenly Zurov shouted: "I.A., German. declared war on Russia!" I thought he was joking, but Bahr shouted the same thing from below. I ran to the dining room to the radio - yes! We are terribly excited. [...]
Quiet, cloudy day. . .
***
The day before yesterday M. rewrote "Ballad". No one believes that I almost always make everything up - everything, everything. It's a shame! The "Ballad" is all invented, from word to word - and at once at one o'clock: somehow I woke up in Paris with the thought that I absolutely must [send] something to the "Envoy. N.", it must be there; drank coffee, sat down at the table - and suddenly, for no apparent reason, he began to write, not knowing what would happen next. And the story is wonderful.
From 8 to 9. V. 44.
The hour of the night. I got up from the table - it remains to add several. lines of Clean Monday. Turned off the light, opened the window to ventilate the room - not the slightest. air movement; the full moon, the night is not bright, the whole valley is in the thinnest fog, far on the horizon is the obscure pinkish gleam of the sea, silence, the soft freshness of young woody greenery, here and there the first nightingales chirping ... Lord, prolong my strength for my lonely, poor life in this beauty and at work!
14. 5. 44.
21/2 o'clock in the morning (which means that it is no longer May 14, but May 15).
During the evening he wrote "Steamboat Saratov". He opened the window, darkness, silence, in some places muddy. stars, raw freshness.
23. 5. 44.
In the evening I wrote "Camargue". Pts. cold night. . .
20.I. 44g.
Again excellent. day. Was at Kl[yagin's].
Take Novgorod.
The nights are starry, clear, cold. Whatever you remember (and snippets are replayed every minute), everything is painful, sad. Sometimes I sleep for 9 hours or more. And almost every. morning, as soon as you open your eyes, some kind of sadness - aimlessness, the end of everything (for me).
I looked through my notes on the former Russia. I keep thinking that if I could live, I would end up in Russia! What for? The old age of the survivors (and women with whom once), the cemetery of everything that once lived ...
25.I. 44g.
[...] Suddenly remembered Gagarinsk. the alley, my youth, a fictitious love for Lop[atin] - who now for some reason (5 kilometers from me) lies in a grave in some Valbona. Isn't that wild!
27.1. 44g.
Without 1/4 6. I'm sitting at the window to the west. On the horizon, the sky is green - the sun has just set - closer is the whole part of the sky (in front of me) in a solid cloud, under which (inaudible. - O. M.) is like a fleece and is colored orange-copper.
Now its color is getting redder, the forest valley towards Draguignan in purple steam.
Around - to Nice, to Cannes - everything is in moderation, rudely flowery, it's true, tomorrow there will be bad weather.
Today, after breakfast, great vivacity - steak with curry, real coffee and lemon?
Received 2 Swedish. parcels.
"The book has always been for me an adviser, a comforter, eloquent and calm, and I did not want to exhaust its benefits, keeping them for the most important occasions" George Sand
On the channel "Culture" in the program "The Glass Bead Game", the writer Igor Volgin at the end always addresses the viewers with admonition: "Read and reread the classics!"
To the extent possible, I do this. My pencil notes in books (only from my personal library!) help me to return to what I have read.
After a recent trip to the city of Efremov, Tula region, where the Bunin family museum is located, I finally returned to the work of my beloved writer in Once again. I read and analyze.
Here, for example, I finally received an answer to the question: why is the collection of stories, the anthem of love "Dark Alleys", named after the first story in it, exactly that way? It turns out that Ivan Alekseevich read a poem by Nikolai Ogaryov " ordinary story", where there are lines:
It's been a wonderful spring!
They were sitting on the beach
The river was quiet, clear
The sun was rising, the birds were singing;
Stretched for the river dol,
Quietly, luxuriantly green;
Near the wild rose scarlet blossomed,
There was an alley of dark lindens...
The text of "Dark Alleys" says that in his youth, the hero of the story, Nikolai Alekseevich, read poems to his beloved Nadezhda about " dark alleys". The story ends with the lines from Ogaryov's poem, only slightly edited: "All around the scarlet rose hips bloomed, there were alleys of dark lindens ..."
Before the release in 2014 on the television screen feature film Nikita Mikhalkov with title story of the same name Bunin " Sunstroke"(1925) I re-read the original source. I was very surprised that from such a short story it was possible to compose big movie. The program "Observer" of October 17, 2014 helped me figure this out, where in a conversation between Andrei Maksimov and Nikita Mikhalkov and Boris Lyubimov, the veil was lifted. It turns out that Vladimir Moiseenko (1963-2011) and Alexander Adabashyan wrote their original script, based on the story itself and the diaries of I.A. Bunin 1918-1920 "Cursed Days".
Reading" cursed days", Printed by me from the Internet, I put everything off until later, preparing myself for the next experience. Now, after the film "Sunstroke" and the documentary Mikhalkov's "Light Breath of Ivan Bunin" found on the Internet, I said to myself: it's time.
The attitude of the writer to revolutions in general was already known to me from stories. But a look at the events of 1917-1919 in Russia is clearly expressed in diary entries.
Historically, the goal of any revolution is FREEDOM. As a rule, in this event, a LEADER or a COLLECTIVE AGREEMENT under the baton of "leaders" from the outside is at the helm. What drives the LEADER at the same time? I.A. Bunin cites Napoleon's statement on this subject: "What made the revolution? Ambition. What put an end to it? Also ambition. And what a wonderful excuse to fool the crowd was freedom for us all!"
Freedom at any cost. Even with such appeals as in Odessa in 1919: "Forward, relatives, do not count corpses!".
Losses in this case are the costs of the revolutionary moment. After all, there is a bright future ahead: "Factories - for the workers, land for the peasants!", About which the newspaper Odessa Communist (1919) was burning:
communist worker
Knows what strength is:
He has a love for work.
A diary entry dated April 15, 1919 with an unflattering characterization of a man by the name of Shchepkin alerted me: “Ten months ago, some Shpan came to me, an extremely lousy and ragged little man, something like the worst salesman, and offered me to be my impresario, to go with him to Nikolaev, to Kharkov, to Kherson, where I will publicly read my works “every evening for a thousand Duma ones.” Today I met him in the street: he is now one of the associates of that crazy bastard Professor Shchepkin, the commissar for theatrical business, he is shaved, well-fed - everything shows that he is full - and is dressed in a wonderful English coat, thick and delicate, with a wide strap at the back.
I knew only about one Shchepkin, Mikhail Semyonovich (1788-1883), a Russian actor, the founder of the Russian acting school. The Higher Theater School bears his name.
Further, in a diary entry dated April 16, I read: "Prof. Yevgeny Shchepkin," Commissar of Public Education "(Odessa), handed over the management of the university to "seven representatives of revolutionary students", such, they say, scoundrels, which even now in the afternoon with fire to look for.
The name Evgeny gave me a hint to determine from the reference book that this is none other than Evgeny Nikolaevich Shchepkin (1860-1920), a Russian historian and teacher, the son of Nikolai Mikhailovich Shchepkin and the grandson of the same Russian actor, which was mentioned earlier.
Bunin's entry of April 25 about the "commissar of public education" (for some reason Ivan Alekseevich quotes the name of this position) is generally a caricature, it is not a trace to cite it here.
Probably, the then 49-year-old writer, already well-known in Russia, had reasons for such a categorical and neglect to the revolutionary figure Shchepkin in a short time stay of Soviet power in Odessa (April - August 1919), God be his judge. But still it is surprising what kind of person, a descendant of famous actor? Dry information reference literature gives little insight into it. And his early death on December 12, 1920 makes you think.
My acquaintance with Maximilian Voloshin began unexpectedly with his poem about Russia "The Burning Bush", written just on May 28, 1919 in Koktebel:
Who are you, Russia? Mirage? An obsession?
Was you? There is? or not?
Whirlpool... rapids... dizziness...
Abyss... madness... delirium...
Everything is unreasonable, extraordinary:
Waves of victories and devastation ...
Thought freezes before the secret thing
And the spirit is terrified...
We are infected with conscience: in every Stenka there is Saint Seraphim, Surrendered to the same hangovers and thirsts, We languish with the same will. We perish without dying, We bare the Spirit to the bottom. A marvelous miracle - burning without burning, the Burning Bush!
Before this acquaintance, I associated the phrase Burning Bush with the Icon Mother of God"Burning Bush", which she wrote about in a comment to Svetlana Tishkina's article "The Road to the Diocese" http://site/content/view/doroga-v-eparhiyu-/
And here, in a poem, it emphasizes the inviolability of our sacred Russian state.
She met the poet's beloved woman, not suspecting who she was. I read to my son a fairy tale in the verses of a certain Cherubina de Gabriac "Mule without a bridle." It turned out that this is the poetess Elizaveta Dmitrieva, and her pseudonym was invented by Voloshin. Reading about Anna Akhmatova, I learned about love triangle Voloshin-Dmitrieva-Gumilyov and about the duel between poets. I also read Marina Tsvetaeva's prose about her friend Max. She also discovered that the poet's house in Koktebel was a haven for the Russian cultural beau monde until the death of the owner in 1932. About this director Andrei Osipov filmed documentary"Koktebel pebbles" (2014). This is, in fact, a portrait of the "Silver Age".
IN Time of Troubles civil war Maximilian Voloshin, according to the memoirs of his contemporaries, in his house in Koktebel saved one by one, and sometimes simultaneously, whites from reds and reds from whites.
An assessment of the personality and this person, who does not occupy any revolutionary posts, I.A. Bunin in "Cursed Days" is unambiguous as a traitor to the monarchical foundations of the Russian state.
On two passages diary entries out of five I will stop:
Yesterday the poet Voloshin sat with us for a long time. He ran into with an offer of his services ("to decorate the city by the first of May") terribly. I warned him: do not run to them, it is not only low, but also stupid, because they know perfectly well who you were yesterday. He spoke nonsense in response: "Art is out of time, out of politics, I will participate in decoration only as a poet and as an artist." In decorating what? The gallows, and even your own? Still, he ran. And the next day, in Izvestia: "Voloshin climbed up to us, every bastard is now in a hurry to cling to us ..." Now Voloshin wants to write a "letter to the editor" full of noble indignation. More stupid.
Here is Voloshin. The day before yesterday, he called to Russia the "Angel of Vengeance", who was supposed to "instill the delight of murder in the heart of a girl and bloody dreams in the soul of a child." And yesterday he was a White Guard, and now he is ready to sing the Bolsheviks ...
My opinion is that this God-fearing man LOVED PEOPLE, no matter what color of clothes they were dressed up in. His restless soul was looking for justification for the events taking place at that time in Russia. It is enough to read his poems, love for the Motherland is everywhere.
It's over with Russia ... On the last
We chatted her, chatted,
Slipped, drank, spat,
Smudged on dirty squares,
Sold out on the streets: is it not necessary
To whom the land, republics, yes freedom,
Civil rights? And the homeland of the people
He himself dragged out on the pus, like carrion.
Oh Lord, open, scatter,
Send us fire, ulcers and scourges,
Germans from the west, Mongol from the east,
Give us into slavery again and forever
To redeem humbly and deeply
Judas sin until the Last Judgment!
"Peace", 1917
All Rus' is a fire. Unquenchable flame
From end to end, from age to age
Buzzing, roaring... And the stone is cracking.
And each torch is a person.
Are we not ourselves, like our ancestors,
Did they let you fall? A hurricane
Inflated it, and drown in caustic smoke
Forests and villages of fire...
"Kitezh", 1919
From the blood spilled in battles
From dust to dust
From the torments of the executed generations,
From souls baptized in blood
Of hateful love
Of crimes, frenzy -
Righteous Rus' will arise.
I pray for her all
And I believe in eternal plans:
She is forged with a sword blow,
She builds on bones
She shines in fierce battles,
Relics are built on burning relics,
In crazy prayers melts.
"Spell", 1920
For a long time I could not get an answer to the question, why did Maximilian Voloshin not leave Russia in 1920, when he sailed from Odessa to Bunin? Accepted Soviet power? Resigned? The opinion of my mother's friend, a school teacher of literature with great experience, is authoritative for me. She believes: no, this broad-minded person did not accept Soviet power and did not reconcile. He simply outlined his field of activity with his slogan "Art is out of time, out of politics." The pain is about home country hid in the heart for the time being.
The poem "Vladimir Mother of God" of 1929 is another release of experiences:
And Our Lady of Vladimir
Rus' led through the abomination, blood and shame
On the thresholds of the Kyiv boats
Pointing out the correct fairway.
But the blind people in the hour of wrath
He himself gave the keys of his shrines,
And the Representative Virgo left
From their desecrated strongholds...
Faithful guardian and zealous guardian
Mother of Vladimir, - to you -
Two keys: golden to Her abode,
Rusty - to our woeful fate.
The bell according to Maximilian Voloshin rang at the age of 55. His heart is tired.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin lived for 83 years.
God works in mysterious ways!
In Kyiv, "the destruction of the monument to Alexander II has begun." A familiar occupation. After all, since March 17, eagles, coats of arms began to be torn off ...
How it resonates with modernity. "Leninapad" began in Ukraine. Alexander II - Russian sovereign-emperor. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is the founder of Ukraine as a state and Ukrainians as a nation. Here it is - the attitude to history!
Now I will return to the beginning of the note with gratitude to my true friends, books. And I will finish with the famous words of A.S. Pushkin:
Oh how many wonderful discoveries we have
Prepare enlightenment spirit
And experience, the son of difficult mistakes,
And genius, friend of paradoxes,
And chance, god is the inventor.
The role of N.P. Ogaryov's poem "An Ordinary Tale" in the fate of the heroes of I.A. Bunin's story "Dark Alleys".
Introduction.
In Ivan Bunin's story "Dark Alleys" (1938), written by a 68-year-old writer, a noble hero, quite mature at that time, reads to the young serf girl Nadezhda, his short-lived lover, N.P. Ogaryov's poems "An Ordinary Tale" (1842. ) that mention "dark alleys". According to Bunin's memoirs, his story was born as a result of rereading this poem by Nikolai Ogaryov, who became the author of "An Ordinary Tale" at the age of 29. Indeed, in these two works, created by the young Ogarev and the already quite old, mature Bunin, analogies can be traced. Yes, and the title of Bunin's short story is essentially a quote from Ogaryov: "There were alleys of dark lindens ..." How, it would seem, is not so well-known a wide range readers, the poem of the poet, more familiar to us from history books as a friend of the revolutionary A. Herzen, who shared the emigration with him, served as the birth of "Dark Alleys", an undeniable masterpiece of Russian classics? as one literary event overflowed into another almost a hundred years later? What intersecting temporal paths exist in the boundless field of Russian literature? Let's think about these questions, but first we will re-read, and we, following Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, Nikolai Platonovich Ogaryov's poem "An Ordinary Tale".
ORDINARY STORY
It's been a wonderful spring!
They were sitting on the beach
The river was quiet, clear
The sun was rising, the birds were singing;
Stretched for the river dol,
Quietly, luxuriantly green;
Near the wild rose scarlet blossomed,
There was an alley of dark lindens.
It's been a wonderful spring!
They were sitting on the beach
She was in her prime,
His mustache was barely black.
Oh, if anyone could see them
And I would look out for their faces
Or eavesdrop on their speeches -
How sweet his tongue would be,
The original love language!
He would surely b himself, at this moment,
Blossomed at the bottom of a sad soul! ..
I met them in the light later:
She was the wife of another
He was married, and about the past
There was not a word in sight;
There was peace on their faces.
Their life flowed lightly and evenly,
They meet each other
Could laugh in cold blood...
And there, along the river,
Where the scarlet rose hips then bloomed,
Some simple fishermen
Went to the dilapidated boat
And they sang songs - and it's dark
The rest is closed to people
What was said there
And how much has been forgotten.
<1842>
1.
Poems open with a picture wonderful spring. Nine quatrains, thirty-six lines. The author divided the story into two unequal parts. The first, of eight lines, is a description of Russian nature, early morning, a quiet, clear river. Dawn. The scarlet rosehip is blooming - it means it's May. The nearby "dark linden alley" is an indication of the proximity of the manor's estate.
The nobles, a young man and a young lady, meet the dawn together, most likely because one of them was visiting the estate and already early in the morning they could take a walk together.
Exactly repeating the first two lines in the second part of the poem -
It's been a wonderful spring!
They were sitting on the beach,
the author describes the young heroes in short but capacious strokes:
She was in her prime,
His mustache was barely black.
The names of the heroes are not given - He, She, They are only personal pronouns that generalize the situation, extending it widely to all Russian landowner estates in Russia in the forties of the nineteenth century.
Let's not think that the author used a special artistic technique of "peeping" at the development of other people's feelings: most likely, the third hero was chosen by these young people as an attorney for their relationship, because it is he who knows when they came to the river that they spoke to each other "the language of love of the original ". Perhaps Ogaryov sees himself in the face of a young man with a barely broken mustache, peering intently into the past.
The literary technique of detachment, which makes it possible to look at oneself and the characters from the outside, allows the author to see the faces of young lovers closely and for a moment "bloom at the bottom of a sad soul." Spring in nature, spring of life, spring of love...
"I met them in the light later" ... - so the second, long, stanza of seven quatrains told us, it would seem, an "ordinary story": the author sees his acquaintances, who did not have their common life, in one of the noble assemblies. She is like Pushkinskaya Tatiana, Married; he, unlike Onegin, is married. But this is where the slight similarity of literary situations ends. It is striking - and the author emphasizes this with great emotional force - the non-standard use of the Russian literary love tradition: former lovers do not suffer, do not love, do not want to remember the common past, they are self-satisfied, cold-blooded in communicating with each other in society and seem to laugh at their own former innocence. It is likely that each of them in marriage solved, first of all, an economic problem: she married favorably and is happy with her security; he married well.
In time, according to the generally accepted opinion, (not without the persistent pressure of their parents) their youth, freshness, beauty of youth - their main fast-spending capital - were sold.
IN detailed description new secular habits, cynical in relation to the light, naive, inexperienced past of the heroes, in the description of a lonely dilapidated boat on the banks of that river of youth and young happiness, a boat to which lovers will no longer descend, and all the pain of the narrator lies, his spiritual protest against such a mutual situation betrayal of the ideals of youth. He is the only one who regrets the love that was abused in such a way, the first bright feeling that He and She refused under the pressure of life circumstances.
But how much was said about this feeling - and how much was forgotten! - only the main thing to know about it lyrical hero, an author suffering from the disharmony of the world, pierced by its imperfection. Probably, a lot was said ardent and high, melted like smoke, if such sad verses were born.
In the penultimate quatrain, the author again (for the second time) mentions the flowering wild rose of past years. The use of an odd repetition, most likely, is not accidental and is also called upon to solve the set artistic task - the disclosure of feelings of regret and sadness.
Memories of the past are accompanied by the singing of the fishermen by the river, by that boat, in the present. Songs simple peasants, people from the people, of course, sad and sad, perhaps with an appeal to the mother river, show the deep class division of Russia, the indifference of Russian nobles to the problems of serfs, to their people who nursed them. Remembers that Russian society consists not only of the nobility of the capital and provincial landowners, and life is not only of high-society balls, only the author, thereby very different from the representatives of his class.
The epithet "dark" is also used in the text of this poem twice: "there was an alley of dark lindens" (at the beginning of the verse) and "... it remains dark, it is closed for people ..." (at the end of the work) The adverb "dark" ends line, and the verb "remained" transfers the thought to a new line, starting it. Thus, the location of the word and its stress on the last syllable emphasizes special meaning for the author of the concept of "dark", contrasting this color with scarlet flowers wild rose. Many plants bloom in spring. Why does the author focus our attention on the wild rose? It is easy to see the analogy of the thorns of a wild rose with the hurting thorns of life (and here the romance of the Russian poetic tradition obvious), but after all, the image of the violent flowering of the scarlet wild rose also opposes the well-groomed flower beds of the manor estates, as the "unkempt" element of Russian folk life.
And the linden alleys? After all, they are not only an indication of the nature of central Russia, the preference of Russian landlords of this particular tree (dried linden blossom was widely used as a medicinal sedative, and what kind of tea drinking in manor estates managed without it!) Dark lindens, most likely densely planted, forming cool fragrant arches with their crowns, and the secret of the spiritual life of young people for others (hence the epithet "dark") under these lindens become an artistic device designed to draw the reader's attention to the depth and the complexity of the life of a young soul, whose movements can be caught, understood and revealed only by the refined nature of the poet-psychologist, which N. Ogaryov is here.
So what still comes to the fore in Ogaryov's poem? Are his young heroes memorable? No, it’s boring with them, they are empty, vulgar, blurry images, you don’t want to think about them, there is nothing for the soul to stop with. But the narrator, who involuntarily revealed to us and involuntarily brought to the fore the Russian nature dear to the heart of every Russian person, filled his ballad with tints of colors and tangible smells of a linden leaf, blooming wild rose, peacefully , wisely and calmly flowing river in the outback of the local province and voiced this picture, dear to him and to us, with ethnic songs of peasant fishermen, songs that can purify, revive and support a mournful soul.
2.
Heroes of Bunin's short story, a brilliant, but already old officer tsarist army, Nikolai Alekseevich, and his former serf lover, Nadezhda, and now the owner of a private hotel on the Tula road, we find them at a chance meeting in a tavern hut, where a sixty-year-old military man returning to St. Petersburg from a business trip, waiting for the change of horses. Old acquaintances stayed together in this clean room with a wooden table and benches, smelling of freshly cooked cabbage soup, not for long, but how much life and feelings this unexpected short meeting contained both for the heroes of the short story and for its readers. N. Ogaryov's poems "An Ordinary Tale" immediately enter the fabric of Bunin's work in a dynamic dialogue of characters. Nadezhda reminds her old lover that during their stormy love thirty years ago (and the heroine is now forty-eight years old) “I was deigned to read all the poems about all sorts of“ dark alleys ”. long years remembered Ogaryov's lines performed by a young gentleman and now, thirty years later, she quotes them "on one of the big Tula roads", where her institution is located. In the words of Ogaryov,
Oh, if anyone could see them
Then, at their morning meeting,
And I would look out for their faces
Or listen to them...
Shocked unexpected meeting, Nikolai Petrovich is extremely frank and honest; he twice (again the unlucky odd number "two", used as an artistic device by Ogaryov) calls his life "ordinary history", thus involuntarily using the Ogaryov headline, adding to this the epithet "vulgar", that is, beaten, famous, going by everyone one scenario. He was cheated on by his wife, whom he "madly loved", left him "even more insulting than I am you" (Ogaryov's theme of betrayal). The adored son "came out as a scoundrel, wast, insolent, without a heart, without honor, without conscience" (and again Ogaryov's motives in the characterization of high-society youth).
This is how now, it turns out, one must also understand the generalizing meaning of the title of N.P. Ogaryov - already in the title "Ordinary Tale" contains an exhaustive description of the noble class, the main property of his nature and the author's rejection of his immoral features are emphasized.
It is interesting to understand why, nevertheless, the thirty-year-old Nikolenka (that was Nadya’s name then) read exactly these verses to an eighteen-year-old peasant girl, whether life began for him with such a betrayal of a young girl, who then could calmly meet him in the world, which is so poignant reflected Ogaryov in his sad story. Wasn't the passion for the beautiful Nadezhda a substitute for a desecrated feeling and at the same time a secret revenge on a windy friend of her class? The genre of the short story, suggesting understatement, incompleteness, opening art picture several perspectives, gives the possibility of a variant reader's reading, and we have the right to put forward such assumptions, following the two texts simultaneously, exploring their mutually contiguous details.
But it is obvious, when comparing the two works we have chosen, that the still very poorly outlined topic of serfdom and its destructive impact on the souls, destinies, morality of people in N.P. Ogaryov, the attitude of the Russian nobility to this shameful phenomenon - acquires paramount sound in .A. Bunina. Remembering the beauty of Nadezhda, admiring her eyes and figure, remembering that this girl from the people, who had no equal (and everyone recognized this), not only obeyed his master's whim, but passionately, for life, fell in love with him, that she turned out to be sensitive to poetry, if even after thirty years he remembers the lines from Ogaryov by heart, the old tsarist polished officer blushes with shame, but cannot but express his admiration to Nadezhda. Unlike the heroes of Ogaryov, Bunin's heroes have both conscience and memory. The meeting with the aged, but consciously unmarried Nadezhda and a vivid flash of memories of their former love even more highlighted in the eyes of the hero the dirt of intra-family high-society relations, revealed the worthlessness of the life lived in a humiliating marriage. It would seem that the past, as if buried under the layers of the lived, should never have declared itself, but it flared up in the hero’s soul, like smoldering coals suddenly flare up in a dead fire.
With indestructible evidence, the former serf, and now a lonely, but independently living free businesswoman, not only maintaining a private hotel, but also giving money in growth (having known the refined love of the master, giving him "her beauty, her fever", she could no longer marry for a peasant), who received, as a reward for all her trials, about which "it's a long story, sir," already free from the second landowner (which means that the estate, together with the serfs, was sold by Nikolai Alekseevich), far pushed aside with her spiritual essence, the honestly lived life of all secular beloved hero, wife and mistresses. Having received freedom, and with it the initial capital (and this fact worthily distinguishes the heroine from the general mass of serf martyrs), Nadezhda is now independent, independent, as long as she can support herself, conduct business, she is respected in her environment (the coachman told the master about this on his way back), she stands firmly on her feet, although she herself is no longer young.
Why did the author, who has been living abroad for a long time, push his heroes at the intersection of Russian roads? In order to convey to the reader how tangibly, interpenetratingly these two concepts are connected in the genotype of a Russian person - the nobility and the people? In order to blush endlessly with shame, the old military man shake himself through this shame and thus pass through its purifying influence with the help of a meeting given by fate? It can be seen that the author, although he himself admires the fruit of his artistic imagination - His Excellency with a "beautiful elongated face with dark eyes", is still slim figure military, his tall and the way he "easily ran up to the porch of the hut" - and ashamed of his hero, and sorry for him, and I really want to somehow morally help him. One thing is certain: Bunin, in exile, cannot live without Russia, he constantly thinks about her, she lives indestructibly in him.
In what position could Nikolai Alekseevich leave Nadezhda? Of course, pregnant. “But, really, you left me very heartlessly - how many times I wanted to lay hands on myself from resentment from one, not to mention everything else,” Nadezhda reminds the hero in what position he left her. "Everything else" - this may be the death of an illegitimately born baby, adopted from the landowner, that " ordinary story", which is found in many works of Russian literature. The blood of Nikolai Alekseevich dissolved in Nadezhda. So the nobility, trampling on its people, but feeding on its juices, dissolved in it. the future government official or military man fell asleep to her lullaby songs, it was she, the dairy mother, who sometimes became his spiritual mother, from whom he adopted, sucking with her milk and songs, native language. And it was she who, at the moment of his advancing male maturity, came to him in the form of a young, but full of strength, physical health, a strong, tanned village woman, pouring into him pure young energy, coming as if from the earth itself.
The fate of Nadezhda shows the indestructible national strength, endurance, love of the Russian common man to creative work, the spiritual beauty and greatness of the Russian woman - to a large extent, this Nekrasov theme found a kind of refraction in the prose of I.A. Bunin.
Which court could the serf apply to? How could justice be achieved? There were no such state mechanisms for the forced Russian people, and they created their own deep philosophy of patience, love and forgiveness, which helps to live. Dialogue of characters about forgiveness is filled with different semantic nuances. It is important for Nikolai Alekseevich to be forgiven by Nadezhda, because he does not refuse his guilt before her, even if years have passed. “If only God would forgive me. And you, apparently, forgave me,” he says “patter”, “taking out a handkerchief and pressing it to his eyes.” To which Nadezhda replies as follows: “No, Nikolai Alekseevich, I didn’t forgive. Since our conversation touched our feelings, I’ll say frankly: I could never forgive you. As I had nothing more precious than you in the world at that time, so then That's why I can't forgive you. Well, what to remember, they don't carry the dead from the graveyard." In the understanding of Nikolai Alekseevich, "to forgive" is not to hold a grudge, not to get angry, to let go of sin. In the understanding of Nadezhda, "to forgive" is to forget, not to remember, not to remember. And how to forget that it was so expensive? So Ogaryov's theme of memory in the "Ordinary Tale" continues polemically in its own way and is refracted by Bunin in "Dark Alleys".
Farewell scene. Nadezhda kissed Nikolai Alekseevich's hand (a common gesture for a Russian woman of serf Russia), and he kissed her hand (we agree that this is already a completely unusual gesture). It contains the hero's plea for forgiveness, reconciliation, recognition of previously unrecognized equality, no - humble recognition of her spiritual superiority over him, gratitude for the best moments of life (as it is now clear to him) with her, for the height of the spirit.
Such behavior of a Russian old nobleman, who, at the cost of terrible mistakes, losses and disappointments, came to a new life philosophy in relation not only to a woman who gratuitously gave him her feelings and youth, but in relation, in her face, and to her people, puts Bunin's hero in one of the first places in the gallery of the best male portraits not only the literature of the Russian diaspora, but also Russian literature in general.
Although Nikolai Alekseevich’s main overwhelming feeling in his further journey to St. Petersburg remains a painful sense of shame, it, according to its spiritual laws, turns into a cleansing feeling of gratitude for the best, “truly magical minutes” for a woman with such a deep and capacious named Hope. Therefore, the hero comes to mind on the way to the train, on the Tula road, "carved with many black ruts", Ogaryov's favorite lines: "All around the scarlet rose hips bloomed, there were alleys of dark lindens ..."
So the poems of N.P. Ogaryov, re-read by I.A. Bunin, brought to life a wonderful short story, became part of amazing story meeting of two Russian people, outliving their fates with thorns of suffering, but also with scarlet flowers of true, not bought with money, happiness, a story that would remain “closed to people” if it had not been told to us by the author with such artistic talent.
We note that the hero drives up to the postal station "in a cold autumn storm" along the road "drenched in rain", and leaves without drinking tea from the samovar, already in the low sun, "shone yellow on the empty fields", although the horses continue "slap smoothly through the puddles." Image autumn nature of the Tula region is deeply artistically combined with the "autumn age" of the heroes of the short story and the age of its author himself, in contrast to the "spring age" of young people in "An Ordinary Tale", which is probably why the philosophical outline of "Dark Alleys" is so undeniably wise. And the yellow light of the already setting sun, and the measured movement of the tarantass, setting you up for calm thoughts, and the image of an elderly, but still handsome military man with a white mustache and sideburns, "still black-browed", who has just received a new, strong, unpredictable, but reviving lesson in life , and Nadezhda, looking after him from the window of her room, and Klim, the driver, discussing the merits of the inn owner - in all these pictures, Russia of the 50s-60s of the 19th century, a country of dark mysterious alleys and unusual human tales, in its slow but steady forward movement.
